


Intelligence

by aideomai



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dogs, F/F, Gen, M/M, Post-War, Suspicions, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 22:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16027295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aideomai/pseuds/aideomai
Summary: “I don’t believe it,” Ginny said, voice low with venom and fury. “Did you know?”“I knew there was a spy,” Hermione said.





	Intelligence

**Author's Note:**

> this is an afterword to [In The Hand](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14488914), about the Harry & Draco called James & Abraxas, and will probably not make much sense unless you've already read that; you might also want to read this [tumblr ficlet](https://dddraconis.tumblr.com/post/173486624444/what-r-ur-visions-for-abraxas-and-james-they-were) about them. this is set post-war, but a much longer war than in the HP books.

“I don’t believe it,” Ginny said, low with venom and fury. “Did you know?”

“I knew there was a spy,” Hermione said evenly.

She had known. She’d even known that the spy must have been pretty high up in the Death Eaters, though her guesses had changed from month to month. For a while she’d thought it might have been Pansy Parkinson; for a while, Gemma Farley, a tall calm woman in her late twenties who once caught Hermione’s eye in a minor skirmish and looked at her a moment too long. The closest she’d come to the truth was a half-baked suspicion that it was Narcissa Malfoy, and that had been swept away pretty quick, when Neville killed Narcissa two years into the war.

“But him?” Ginny’s voice was thick with disgust. “It can’t be true.”

Across the low dark chambers of the Wizengamot, Draco Malfoy turned to the young staffer who’d come up to his elbow. He listened with his head half-cocked, his cool grey gaze making it clear that this was already a waste of time. Hermione said, “I trust Harry.”

“I trust Harry too,” Ginny said. She was nearly trembling. “But I don’t trust _him_. Not for a second. You know the reports we got back--”

Hermione did know the reports. Draco Malfoy, who had shed all his schoolboy cowardliness and risen swift through the Death Eater ranks. Draco Malfoy, who lounged at the left-hand side of Lord Voldemort, stretching out his long legs. Draco Malfoy the torturer, the murderer, the one whose hand closed cool on your shoulder and you knew it was all over.

Ginny was stuttering, not sure how to finish her sentence. Hermione reached out and took her hand, calmly folded her fingers around Ginny’s. Ginny looked up at her. “You’ll make sure.”

“Yes,” Hermione agreed.

“Merlin.”

Ginny shook her head, gaze wandering back to the cold chambers, where they were dragging the next Death Eater in, headed for the chair. He was screaming, pointing at Malfoy, almost hysterical; when Malfoy’s head swung round to look at him, the Death Eater jerked and froze with terror as though Malfoy were a Dementor. Malfoy looked lazy, uninterested. As Hermione watched, Harry came through a door; he crossed the floor, glancing briefly at the prisoner, and got to Malfoy. They conferred for a moment. Harry’s face was perfectly calm, perfectly still. Malfoy’s gaze was blank. Harry could have been talking to a wall.

“Look at him,” Ginny said bitterly. “He’s the only one who came through the war looking better.”

Hermione laughed at that, short and startled, felt her mouth pulling at her scar tissue. It was true. Harry was beautiful as ever, but his scar stayed livid and raised, and with the missing finger and threads of silver through his hair he looked much older than he was. Ginny had lost her leg, and though the prosthesis was well-crafted and clever she would walk with a limp for the rest of her life. Hermione looked in the mirror and saw the mark of Bellatrix Lestrange every day. It was a rare member of Dumbledore’s Army - though she supposed they needed a new name, these days - who didn’t carry the marks of the war on their face.

But Draco Malfoy had settled into his tall leanness at last. He looked strong, graceful, not the pointy scrawny kid he’d been at Hogwarts. His hair caught all the light in the room. His eyes were grey and sure. And his smile, when he flashed it as he did now, catching her watching him, was as cold and cruel as a knife’s edge, just as enticing, just as worrying.

\---

In the first few years of the war, even after Ron was killed, Hermione had dreamed about winning and the world she’d create with a fierce, desperate sort of tenderness. She wanted all the things she’d wanted when she was a teenager; she’d wanted to free everyone, to change wizarding legislation, to fix the Ministry’s stale representation of rural wizarding districts and non-wizarding magical creatures. She wasn’t quite sure when that had fallen apart, whether it had left her all at once after one of the big fights, perhaps after Hagrid was murdered, his body dragged playfully through the air by a jeering crowd of Death Eaters led, she remembered now, by a cool-eyed Draco Malfoy; or if it had slipped away, piece by piece, until she could no longer remember being the girl who had wanted it.

Still, even when she’d realised that the wizarding world was too ruptured to have anything but a firm, decisive control team for at least half a decade before new elections, she’d never thought it would involve sitting in a room with Draco Malfoy.

He didn’t seem discomforted at all, just lounged against a desk, half-heartedly tossing an apple in the air. Ginny had her back turned on him, shoulders hunched. Dean seemed confused and upset but accepting. Luna was watching him with fixed, huge eyes. Only Harry didn’t seem to notice him, or mind him, as though it was perfectly normal that Malfoy was there, or as though Malfoy was nothing more than another piece of furniture, or a dust mote spinning in the light.

Hermione shook her head and said, “Harry, I really think it should be you.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Harry said, half-smiling.

“You’re the face of the war,” Hermione said. “You _won_ it.”

“Yes, but I can’t lead a country,” Harry said. “That’s all you. It was always going to be you. Don’t tell me you’ve got cold feet now.”

“I just think we should consider all the options.”

“We have,” Ginny said. “It’s you, ‘Mione.” Her gaze was hot, sure. Hermione blinked once in the face of it.

“Well,” Hermione said. She looked at Harry. “You’ll be here.”

Harry nodded. “Aurors,” he said, then made a face. “When we get on top of that. Until then it’ll have to be me and the Army.” He pointed at Dean. “Muggle relations.” Then Luna. “Magical Creatures outreach and treaties. And you’re with me, Weasley.”

Ginny threw him a quick grin, then frowned. “What about him?” She jerked her head towards Malfoy, who let his gaze fall upon her, unreadable.

“Intelligence,” Harry said.

“Once a spy, huh?” Ginny said, eyes narrowed.

“That’s right,” Malfoy said. His voice was smooth, low. He didn’t talk as much as he had in school. He’d finally worked out that silence was more useful.

“Hm,” Hermione said, because they needed intelligence, almost desperately; the Death Eaters, once so formidable that they ran the country, had been dealt enough blows to shatter, but she didn’t trust the pieces and she didn’t know where they were. But she wasn’t sure.

Ginny was even less sure. “Because you have experience of, what--”

“Eleven years,” Harry said quietly.

Hermione’s eyebrows shot up. “Since Snape died?”

“Yes,” Malfoy said, crisp. 

“He’s been on our side for _eleven years_?” Ginny looked disbelieving. “People saw him torturing - he _killed_ us--”

“I’m not sure you quite understand the whole spy business, Weasley,” Malfoy said, bored. “If you go around acting like a bloody great Gryffindor the entire time, the Dark Lord tends to catch on fairly quick, you see.”

“As far as I can tell you’ve done us a lot more harm than good,” Ginny snarled. “What about Parvati Patil? What about Colin Creevey? What about--”

“He killed them when he didn’t have a choice,” Harry said, “and I’ve counted at least six times I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him,” and everyone went quiet. Even Malfoy looked faintly embarrassed, before his expression changed to the familiar sneer.

Hermione looked at Harry. “You didn’t tell anyone.”

“No,” Harry said.

“Not even me,” Hermione said.

Harry looked faintly sympathetic, but not apologetic. “Only Professor Dumbledore knew about Snape.”

“And you,” Malfoy said coolly. “And me, towards the end.”

“Yes,” Harry said, “and he ended up dead.”

Dean cleared his throat. “Shall we talk about the Mungo’s restructure, then?”

\---

Harry turned thirty and they all went to a Muggle pub. Harry and Hermione set up diversionary charms, warning charms, barriers, but after that Hermione felt the fist around her heart loosen a little, and she sat back in her chair and watched Harry laughing. She was smiling, almost helplessly. She’d never thought any of them would make it to thirty.

“Well,” Harry said, sitting down next to her and raising his eyebrows. “Are you going to do a shot with me?”

“Yeah, I’ll do a shot with you,” Hermione said, grinning, and she did; she did two, in fact, and then drank a few beers, and though she was sculling pints of water in between the world went pleasantly fuzzy and Hermione didn’t feel too bad. She felt almost safe, as close as she could remember, and then Ginny sat down next to her and pulled Hermione’s legs over her lap, wrapping an absent hand around Hermione’s ankle, and Hermione felt safer.

But she was drunk, or nearing it, and so for a moment when she saw the light head of hair at the bar she thought she was imagining it, or it was just someone familiar. Then he turned his head and she saw the sharp line of his profile, the way he was looking about the pub. He didn’t look drunk at all.

Hermione slipped away from Ginny as quietly as she could. Ginny was in conversation with Emma Fairfax, another of the younger ones who’d found them in the last five years, and Hermione didn’t want Ginny’s night ruined. She went up to the bar, and Harry did, too, a step ahead of her.

“Malfoy,” he said.

“Potter,” Malfoy said. His eyes skipped over Harry. “Granger.”

Harry turned around, surprised but pleased to find her behind him. He lifted his arm. Hermione slid under it automatically. 

“What are you doing here, Malfoy?” 

Malfoy’s mouth curled, mocking and derisive. “I came to buy Potter a drink,” he told her. His gaze drifted to Potter. “Thirty. I think a lot of people lost a bet today.”

“Yeah, probably,” Harry said.

“You came to buy Harry a _drink_?” Hermione stared.

“Don’t look so surprised, Granger,” Malfoy said, and raised a hand, flagging the bartender. “I bet that he’d make it. It’s a good payday. Pint of the Flensburger, please.”

Harry looked amused. “I don’t think you did.”

“Sure,” Malfoy said, “or how else could I afford this,” and he handed the bartender a tenner without even fumbling. Hermione watched, careful. Malfoy took his change. “Happy birthday.”

“Thank you,” Harry said. “Will you stay for a drink?”

“No,” Malfoy said. “I just dropped by to congratulate you.” Harry held out his hand and Malfoy handed him the pint, and slipped something else into Harry’s palm so quick Hermione almost missed it. He nodded at them both and walked away. 

Harry glanced at the paper in his hand, then put it away. He lowered his head, murmured in Hermione’s ear. “It’s MacNair. They’ve found him.”

Hermione let out a breath. She had some Sobering Up Syrup in her bag. “Finish your drink, birthday boy,” she said. “We’ve got to get back to work.”

\---

MacNair got away, and killed Justin Finch-Fletchley in the process. Hermione, who had rather hoped that the deaths were over, at least for a little while, stood cold on the cliff’s edge and then turned around and saw Malfoy’s silhouette cut against the sky. It should have been too dark to see him but the curselight was still hanging about, turning the midnight grey and green. Hermione put her hand up to her shoulder blade, stretched her elbow back, the old injury twanging at her. She should have listened to Ginny. She had listened, but she should have acted. She’d allowed herself to be lulled into a false sense of security, and she had no idea what a spy like Malfoy might want with their new world.

The next morning, early on, she went into the Ministry Records and pulled everything from the last fifty years on the Malfoys that she could. She made copies of all Malfoy’s publicly available information, from his appointment calendar to the secretary details he’d been assigned. She buried herself in piles of paperwork, and came out with frustratingly little. 

“He’s very good,” she told Ginny that evening, when she returned to the quiet flat she’d taken in Muggle London to find Ginny, exhausted, dropping on Hermione’s front step. Ginny had been working since five, she said, taking new recruits through training, a preliminary examination before the Auror camps she’d be leading later this summer. Hermione got them both inside and glasses of whiskey and then sat on the couch, Ginny stretched out in Hermione’s armchair, and told her about her the day’s fruitless search. “There’s barely anything past his school records. Even those have been tampered with, I think. There’s a few grades missing, and that was just what I could spot. There’s probably more.”

Ginny nodded grimly. “What about what he’s up to these days? Is there anything about his private life available?”

Hermione shook her head. “Not much that I can find. All his official paperwork says he’s at Malfoy Manor, but I went to the House Elf Bureau and apparently the amount of domestic magic being used in the house is very low, unusually low for an occupied building. He might be low maintenance, of course. I can’t find any sign of where else he might be staying.”

“He might sleep in his office,” Ginny said. “He’s always there.”

“Yes,” Hermione agreed. “I would just like to have a better idea of… where he is. Where he goes. I had Priya try her luck, though, and he caught her within ten minutes,” which Hermione had half-expected but been disappointed by all the same. Priya was very good, a cheerful seventeen year old who managed to blend into every background she came across, her sunny face utterly forgettable when she wanted it to be. 

“Was he angry?”

“No, Priya just said he sent her to get him some coffee and then told her to let him alone.”

Ginny scoffed. “Prick.” She ran a hand through her hair, the glow of it warm in Hermione’s dim living room. “What, then?”

“Well, he’s visiting Azkaban on Thursday,” Hermione said.

Ginny’s eyebrows shot up. “Yes?”

Hermione nodded. “To see Pansy Parkinson,” she said. “I thought I’d have a look. That’s the best idea I’ve got right now.”

“You’ll come up with something,” Ginny said, with absent-minded, absolute faith. Hermione looked at her and then looked away. Ginny said, “Can I stay over tonight?”

“Ginny,” Hermione said, and then, when Ginny didn’t say anything else, “Okay.”

\---

Azkaban visits were a matter of public record now, despite Malfoy’s cold protest when the issue came up some weeks ago. Malfoy had argued in his cool, disinterested voice that it was a matter of privacy; that prisoners didn’t have very much; that they had to be careful not to appear too heavy-handed, for fear of popular displeasure and a perceived alignment with the Death Eater rule that had come before them. Hermione had responded calmly that privacy had often been a cover for abuse as much as it was a right, mentioning some of the things that had gone on under Voldemort’s rule, and pointed to the new polling that suggested the population was still very keen on strict control after the fragmentation of war and governments. She and Malfoy continued to fight about it in polite, detached voices for twenty-five minutes, until Harry said, “Okay, that’s enough. Let’s go with Hermione and see how things go,” and they both immediately went quiet. Malfoy leaned back and didn’t react, his face far-off as ever.

It meant that on Thursday afternoon, Hermione could go to the justice offices and request the vial of Draco Malfoy’s visit to Pansy Parkinson, Thursday morning, 9:07 AM. She ignored the curiousity on the face of the staffer who trotted off to fetch it; she’d gambled that going down to get it herself would at least avoid a paper trail but she supposed gossiping wasn’t much better.

“Did you want to loan out a Pensieve, too?” the staffer asked, returning with the memory and holding out the parchment for Hermione to sign it out.

“No, thank you,” Hermione said, and took the vial with its silvery liquid up to her office, locking the door and going to her own Pensieve in the corner. She tipped the memory in, followed it down to its murky depths.

Malfoy was sitting in the little visiting room, one of Azkaban’s less gloomy cells and all the worse for that knowledge: dim, tiny, but with a door rather than bars and a tiny window that opened onto the sea and the floor swept clean. Hermione had spent three days in Azkaban several years ago, in a half-baked desperate disguise that wouldn’t have held up any longer if Harry hadn’t broken in and gotten her out. She put her hands on her arms, rubbed lightly. The memory brought the cold salt air with it.

After a moment two guards led Pansy Parkinson in. Malfoy’s expression didn’t change, face shuttered. He looked at Parkinson. She was thin and filthy, hair matted, nails dense with dirt. She took her seat almost grandly all the same, settling in with the old glamour of her school days, the very slightest toss of her hair. 

“Hello, Malfoy,” she said, which gave Hermione a slight start; she wondered when he’d stopped going by his first name, even amongst his friends.

“Parkinson,” Malfoy said evenly, and Parkinson looked at him with an odd, hungry expression, her face sucked thin by it.

“It’s true then,” she said. “You were the spy.”

“It’s true,” Malfoy said.

“For how long?”

“Most of it,” Malfoy said.

Parkinson nodded. She looked away, throat working, and then hunched her shoulders, turned back to him. Hermione surprised herself by thinking there was something very brave about it. “And I suppose you couldn’t tell anyone.”

Malfoy didn’t say anything.

Pansy laughed, rough and unhappy. “I wouldn’t have told anyone. I - I half-wanted out of the shit myself.”

“No, you didn’t,” Malfoy said.

“I never wanted to kill anyone!”

“But they didn’t ask you to, very often,” Malfoy said, which would have made Hermione punch him, but instead Parkinson just shook her head and let out a shuddering breath.

“I suppose not,” she said. “Can you tell me…”

“Your mother went to Valkenburg,” Malfoy said. “She stayed with some second cousins for a few weeks, and now has a small house of her own. She’s earning money giving Charms classes to some of the home-schooled Dutch wizarding children in the area.”

Parkinson’s knuckles went white on the table edge and then relaxed again. “She must be bored out of her mind,” she said, with a rough laugh, and then she started crying. She pressed her fingers tight to her face. Malfoy didn’t take his eyes off her, and his expression didn’t change. Parkinson mumbled, “Sorry. Sorry.”

“That’s quite all right,” Malfoy said, distant as a cloud. Hermione stared at him, disbelieving.

“Thank you,” Parkinson said, dragging her hand across her face. “Thank you. I - that’s good. And are you - you’re okay?”

Malfoy smiled, thin-lipped.

“I mean… Are you working, or…”

“Yes,” Malfoy said.

“In the Potter-Granger Ministry?”

Malfoy nodded.

“Merlin,” Parkinson said. “Well, I’m. I’m glad you’re not here. I… I knew you’d changed, but I never…” She trailed off again. “I suppose we were all afraid of you, but maybe not for the right reasons.”

“No,” Malfoy agreed, voice very soft. He stood up and walked to the window. “Parkinson, is there anything you need?”

“Anything I...”

“Any additional supplies you require,” Malfoy said. “Food. Blankets. Reading material.”

“I--”

“Hermione,” Harry said, his warm hand closing on her elbow. She turned to look at him, surprise sinking through her slow, like a stone, no need to jump. “Let’s go, huh?”

Hermione nodded and let Harry rise and pull her out of the memory. She stood back in her office and paused momentarily to put her jumper on, the cold stone of Azkaban still sunk into her bones. Then she turned to him, raised her eyebrows. “Did you need me for something?”

“C’mon, Hermione.” Harry looked tired. “That’s private.”

“It’s public record, actually. You helped us decide that.”

“Not so we could nose around in Malfoy’s business,” Harry said. “What did you need to see that for?”

Hermione stayed silent.

Harry looked at her, close and serious. “I trust him.”

“I know you do.”

“Can’t you take my word for it?”

“I’ll always take your word for it,” Hermione said. “I just want to have your back, too. Look at Parkinson. She had no idea he was lying to her.”

“He’s a very good liar,” Harry said. “But I think if he was going to double cross me, he’s missed his opportunity.”

“Harry,” Hermione said.

Harry carefully took the vial, scooped up the memory. He looked at Hermione. “I’ll take this back, shall I?”

“Where’s Malfoy now?” Hermione asked.

“He left the Ministry about an hour ago,” Harry said. “Said he has a migraine.”

“Hmm,” Hermione said. She let Harry take the memory away. Thirty minutes later she broke into Malfoy’s office, veiling her presence - if not the break-in, she suspected his charms were too clever for that - as best she could. His paperwork was either very ordinary or very coded, and often, she suspected, both. But deep down in one of the cabinets she found a paper which had an old code similar to one she’d worked on some six or seven years ago, and with some guesswork and the help of an Arabic dictionary she managed to break it. It was a bill of sale, and it had an address.

\---

It was three days before Hermione had the opportunity to visit the address. She waited for a day when she knew Malfoy would be tied up in meetings for the afternoon, and three of them were with Ginny, so Ginny could warn her if Malfoy made any sudden departures. The whole area around the house - which, Hermione discovered, was fifteen miles outside of a wizarding village in Yorkshire - had been blocked; trying to Apparate into it gave Hermione a throbbing headache, and she had to settle for Flooing to the village and taking one of the tiny regional trains. There was a station three miles from the house, and she walked there, looking about herself. It was all quiet countryside, the trees still clinging to a last few leaves. The moors ran dappled and heavy around her, but the sky opened up very wide and white and all the hills rose around her like they cradled the road she walked upon. It was a nice part of the country, she admitted.

The house, when she reached it, was much smaller than she’d been expecting, a cottage set far back from the walking path. There were hills to its back and a stream running along the east side of the house, what looked like an overgrown and unused orchard to its west. It was, of course, fiercely warded, and Hermione had to sit at the gate and lose another precious ninety minutes untangling the spells and curses enough that she could slip through unnoticed. She didn’t have much time, she noticed, the dusk had nearly ebbed away and she would need to patch up the wards on her way out. She walked quietly up to the door and let herself in.

The cottage was sleepy and warm. It was untidy but not in an abandoned way; there was coats and scarves hanging in the hall and a few paperbacks left on the hall table, sci-fi, not the kind of reading material Hermione would have picked for Malfoy. She went into the kitchen, which had bolognese in a covered pot on the stove, not more than a day old, and dishes in the sink. The cold room was half-heartedly stocked, and to Hermione’s mild astonishment she found packets of Muggle instant ramen in one of the cupboards.

An owl called outside the window, the proper onset of night, and Hermione cursed to herself. She whispered out a spell, one of her crawling listening bugs that she’d modelled after half-remembered James Bond movies, and left it to blend into the wood grain of the table. She let herself out of the house, heart racing as she put the wards back to rights, and then she hesitated. She could just go home - the listening spell would work from any distance, as if the voices it picked up were murmuring directly into her ear. But she was curious, and her curiousity hadn’t been fed enough yet. She crossed to the woods on the other side of the path and climbed up a tree, casting a disillusionment charm and another to improve her eyesight. Then she settled down and waited.

She didn’t have to wait particularly long. There was a low whistle and she saw a figure come up the path, still some distance off, bundled up in a Muggle hoodie and jeans. Hermione blinked. The whistle rang out again, and she half-wondered if it was some code, and then a dog exploded out of the woods beside the house and came pelting down the path, a rangy mutt with something hyena-like about its jaw and long brown legs and a tufty tail that wagged about madly. Not a particularly good guard dog, Hermione thought, half-amused, if it hadn’t even noticed she was there, but she watched all the same as the figure sank to its knees and let the dog leap all over it, fondling its ears, every line of the man’s body easy. It couldn’t be Malfoy, she thought, it just couldn’t, there was no way.

She was right. When the figure got closer Hermione had to clutch at the tree with a cold, numb hand. It wasn’t Malfoy at all. It was Harry.

He didn’t stop at the gates, or the wards. With her enhanced sight, Hermione saw them flare gold around him and then subside, and Harry pushed open the gate and went up the path. He unlocked the door with a key, not a spell. He went inside. Hermione heard, very faintly, the thud of him kicking his boots off. As she waited, breath caught, the light came on in the kitchen and Harry appeared, clear through the glass, sweeping the curtains aside. He fed the dog, who bounded happily around his feet. He turned the stove on. He disappeared for a moment and then returned with the paperback Hermione had noticed.

Hermione had thought, or supposed, that Harry was staying at Grimmauld Place. He mentioned it often enough, and he was usually there on the weekends, when she and Ginny helped him try to make it habitable again, stripping back floors, eradicating mould. Aside from that he didn’t have her over much, preferring to go to her flat or meet her for meals or drinks or, more often than not, long nights in their respective offices, but she’d always assumed it was because Grimmauld Place wasn’t very cheery or liveable just yet, or that they were both too busy. As she watched, Harry sat at the kitchen table and kicked his socked feet up on the table. The dog, finished with its meal, came over and put its head in his lap, and Harry scratched its ears, absent-minded. He didn’t speak, but the dog didn’t seem to mind.

Then Hermione’s gaze drifted again, and she saw the tall, cloaked figure coming up the path. Her throat felt tight. She wanted to warn Harry, though she knew there was no way she could and that based on this strange, unbelievable night, it was unlikely he needed the warning. All the same. With his hood drawn up and his tall, silent, straight-backed figure and the moonlight cold on his face, Draco Malfoy still looked like a Death Eater.

She barely breathed as he passed her tree. She watched the flare of gold from the wards as he came up the path. He opened the door and closed it, the slightest click of noise, and then the listening spell flared to life as Malfoy said, raising his voice only slightly, “Hello.”

“Kitchen,” Harry called back, and after a moment Malfoy appeared through the window, hood fallen back, hands on the buttons of his cloak. The dog, whimpering happily, got up and ran in circles around him, and Malfoy said, “Yes, yes,” and took an impatient step back, slinging his cloak off and over a chair before he deigned to stoop and scratch the dog’s ears. Harry was watching them, quiet and unreadable, his handsome face peaceful as ever.

“I’m just heating up the bolognese again,” Harry said. “We still have spaghetti, right?”

“Second shelf,” Malfoy said. Harry went to stand up and Malfoy said, “I’ll do it. How was the meeting with Thomas?”

“Okay,” Harry said, though he passed a hand over his face and looked anything but okay. “You know. We’re working out the settlement details, the gold in the Lestrange coffers goes pretty deep and that’s before you add all the others, but it’s not as though…”

“No,” Malfoy agreed.

He walked to the counter and the cupboards. Harry’s eyes followed him. He reached up to the cupboard and then looked down. Something about his expression must have changed, though his back was to Hermione, because Harry said, “What?”

“Nothing,” Malfoy said. “Shall we close the curtains? It’s cold tonight.”

 

“Okay,” Harry said, getting up with a yawn, and while he was at the window Hermione saw Malfoy stoop to the counter, fingers pinched, lightning quick.

“Not bad, Granger,” Malfoy murmured into the listening bug, and then crushed it between his fingers.

Hermione climbed out of her tree. She walked home in the cold.

\---

Hermione hadn’t made up her mind what to do, whether to confront Malfoy or talk to Harry or even whether she should tell Ginny, when Malfoy appeared at her desk the next morning. Hermione paused and said, “Can we pick this up again later, Dean? Thank you, it’s a good proposal.”

“Sure,” Dean said, and got up, shuffling out of her office and giving Malfoy an awkward nod. Malfoy closed the door behind Dean and sat down in one of Hermione’s chairs. His legs were very long. They watched each other for a moment.

“I’m not going to apologise, if that’s what you’re here for,” Hermione said at last.

“No, I wasn’t expecting one,” Malfoy said. “Perfectly understandable.”

“I’m glad you agree,” Hermione said. She paused. “Have you spoken to Harry about it?”

“No,” Malfoy said. “He would have noticed himself if it wasn’t you, I think. He’s very used to your magic, he doesn’t consciously track it anymore.”

Hermione nodded. “So what are you here for?”

Malfoy gave her that quick, dangerous smile. “I don’t know. I thought perhaps it would be better to acknowledge it.”

“Yes,” Hermione said, and they watched each other carefully for a moment. She cleared her throat. “If there’s anything I wanted to know, though, I’d ask Harry, not you.”

“I’m not here to assuage your curiousity.”

“I’m not curious,” Hermione said, anger flickering down deep. “I was looking for…”

“A secret,” Malfoy said, “or a motive. Good enough for you?”

Without really meaning to, Hermione said, “How long?” and Malfoy said, “Ten years this Christmas.” Then he stood up.

“I think we can consider this acknowledged,” he said, and swept out of the room.

\---

Hermione didn’t tell Ginny, in the end, though she did mention that she’d looked deep into Malfoy’s documents and not found anything; that Harry trusted him; that Parkinson had appeared to be shocked and not a little betrayed; that, as Harry said, if Malfoy still planned to betray them all he could have done it at a much more convenient time than the first real grasp of control they had. Ginny looked bitter but shrugged and said, “Well, then,” and Hermione agreed with her.

She didn’t tell Harry, either, and she saw no sign that Malfoy had told him. When Ron was alive, Hermione would never have kept a secret from him, but Ron had died a long time ago now and Hermione kept secrets from Ginny. She wasn’t sure what to do with that. She wasn’t sure what to do with any of it, the odd way Ginny looked at her sometimes, the home she’d made in the ruptured Burrow with all its empty seats, the way Ginny reminded her of Ron in a way that was thrilling and awful at once, and sometimes she didn’t remind Hermione of Ron at all. Ginny was still circling her, foot dragging. Hermione was going to stand still and wait.

It took her quite some time, when they were well into the depths of winter, to realise that some of the strung out anxiety she carried around in her shoulders and her neck had eased. It was the flare that didn’t come when Harry announced that he was going home, or when Harry looked particularly exhausted, even the week when he came in looking progressively greyer and iller and had to excuse himself from two meetings to throw up and insisted he was fine, that he could still work, and then thirty minutes later he came into Hermione’s office and said sheepishly that actually he was going home, and he’d be in on Monday, and Malfoy had a _do not disturb_ warning on his office door. She worried about Harry, of course. She always would. She wasn’t sure she understood this and she hoped that one day he would talk to her about it. But she knew the habits of secrecy that their long war had stamped into them, and when she thought about Harry’s disappearances throughout the war, the dangerous missions he’d refused to allow anyone else to accompany him on, and his smaller, quieter disappearances now, she felt worried but unafraid.

“Goodnight, Hermione,” he said, stooping to kiss her hair one night at their local. Hermione smiled up at him and watched him leave, his shoulders straight. She thought about him walking up that long lonely path in the quiet countryside and coming through the little gate. She thought about the dog waiting for him, the ragged paperbacks, the simple food, the cottage protected and warmed against the dark, the way Harry hadn’t been alone during the war, not even in the depths of Voldemort’s stronghold, and he wasn’t alone now. She imagined Harry closing the door and hanging up his coat. She imagined him calling _hello_ into the warm dark and being answered.


End file.
